It’s always a significant date when the snipe start sounding off on the Chayne each year. It’s usually towards the end of the last week in February when the birds start their sing-song chacking just on the last spark of daylight. Within a week or ten days, the first cocks are gamely drumming over the remains of Continue reading

The past few days have been extremely busy up on the hill, and my lack of activity online has been partly to do with many, many hours outdoors, stravaiging through the moss. Perhaps even more fundamentally, there has been no internet access in the house since a stunning thunderstorm struck on Tuesday night and lit Continue reading

Well worth recording the fact that I saw a jack snipe on the Chayne for the first time this afternoon. I’m quite sure that I’ve seen these little birds before, but I suppose that it would be more accurate to say that this is the first one I have ever been 100% certain of. It Continue reading

The last few days have brought a huge influx of snipe and woodcock to Galloway, and the arrival has been so dramatic that it has even been noticeable in daylight hours. Putting out grit trays yesterday afternoon in the thick cloud on the syndicate ground, I was flushing snipe every few yards. Some of them Continue reading

After last summer’s soaking wet snipe bonanza, where birds were rising in even the most unlikely spots, this year has been an odd one. There’s no doubt that the birds were present on the Chayne in some quantity from March until May, when the drumming was almost incessant twenty four hours a day, but the Continue reading

The past few evenings have been spent sitting out on the hill as part of the GWCT and BTO’s woodcock roding survey, which should be on the “to do” list of anyone who shoots. The survey is not difficult, and it provides a great excuse to get out in the gloaming during two of the Continue reading

The past few days have been spent on an extended excursion to England; not usually the Scotsman’s holiday destination of choice, but certainly a fantastic change of scenery for anyone with an interest in birds and moorland. In fact, being a southerner, it is much quicker to see a fantastic array of birds in Northern Continue reading

Just worth noting that I heard the first drumming snipe of the year this evening on the Chayne – It was a lone bird, drumming intermittently over the course of five minutes before dropping back down to earth again. It is precisely a year to the day since I heard the first bird last year Continue reading

Having shot a few snipe in Norfolk, it was interesting to give them a close inspection during the plucking process. I am in two minds as to which is my favourite sound; it’s a toss-up between a bubbling blackcock and a drumming snipe. Having studied snipe at close quarters last spring and enjoyed the incessant Continue reading

As if to confuse the situation even further, having posted about a lack of woodcock yesterday, I now have to report that there are stacks of them. I went out on the darkening this evening with the shotgun on the offchance that there would be something to be seen. What with work and my trip Continue reading